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by now they have encased the whole thing with so much concrete that its gonna be awhile before we have to worry about it. like said you can just stand on top of it, its not leaking, and those men need to be there to make sure it stays this way

Actually I remember hearing a few years ago that the sarcophagus had been built so poorly that it's already beginning to crumble. It's apparently a full time job just trying to patch up the holes in it. Bit worrying really.

Yeah, I find it crazy that you can wander around quite safely on the asphalt, yet the grass is quite dangerous. Makes you wonder what's happened to all the bugs that live in it...

Thanks for that link dannyboy! Some interesting pics in there - the control room picture is particularly creepy.

It's weird to think that there are scientists working there on a day to day basis monitoring the plant, you can quite freely wander through most parts of it with near to no protection.

I heard that had the firefighters (many of whom died soon after) not extinguised the blaze, the plant could have melted all the way down into the water table, and contaminated the water supply for all of Europe - I don't know how much truth there is in this, but it sounds pretty scary .

I think they're gonna re-build the sarcophagus some time soon, as it's pretty dodgy these days.

It's also strange to think that the Chernobyl complex consisted of numerous reactors (I think 5 in total), and the others continued to generate power up until the year 2000 (14 years after the accident at complex 4!).

It's possible to visit the site and the ghost town for as little as £50 for a day trip from Kiev - I'm very tempted by it!

yeah it would be really cool to go there, I've always been interested in this stuff as I used to work for part of Siemens, where we made spares for BNFL and Magnox power stations, and also the reactor control systems for nuclear subs.

lol I just clicked the link in your post, that control room looks very homely

At least the other reactors have been ok anyway. The problem is that it's far more expensive to decommission a reactor than to just leave it running, so that's probably why the others have had such a long stay of execution.

I think the accident also only happened as the engineers were "tinkering" . From memory, they were trying a different shutdown procedure to normal, to see if it was quicker. Unfortunately, I think the original procedure was better

Thats neat, creepy, and cool . I wanna go there. Going to a town to where there is nothing. And there is no one else. Heh, just wait until people are saying "OHHH NOESSS!! THERE ARE GHOSTS THAT HAUNT YOU IN THE TOWWWNNNN "

Edit: Are those TVs still on!? o_O Cause THIS one just freaked the hell outta me o_O. Im hoping thats just the TVs still being on
Edit 2: Mainly why I am scared of the TV is that it looks almost like Michael Jackson in the TV...Help...

It should now - wow I'm making a mess of this thread! My name is something to do with an old computer game I used to play as a kid at the time - Age of Empires 1 for those who remember it .

I too reckon Nuclear energy is going to be the way forward. Coal and Oil are becoming too expensive to be feasible if they're to be run cleanly.

I quite like the idea of off-shore windfarms, and even those on-shore. I cannot believe that environmentalists are complaining about the level of noise/bludeoning of gulls, argh - there's no pleasing them! The fact that they just sit there with very few workers maintaining them on a day to day basis seems quite cool. It's just a shame that you need so many to produce any decent amount of power.

Nuclear energy seems to be the cleanest way of generating a LOT of power as far as I'm concerned.

yeah I'm not averse to some offshore wind farms as part of a 'rounded' strategy for electricity generation. But I think land- based ones are an eyesore.

Some guy defending wind power on TV recently said that he'd much rather look out on a wind farm than a pylon. Maybe so, but that's a nonsensical point, as even if all our electricity came from wind, we'd still need pylons to move it around the national grid.

Yeah, that's a pretty stupid defense, lol! I can see how people would find them an eyesore but I find the things quite pretty - must be a novelty for me and old news for others. I was driving back home, I think along the M25 this weekend, and came round a corner and noticed a huge windmill just by the side of the road which kind of threw me (not literally!), they certainly are very tall.

I just find off-shore wind farms intriguing, just like I do off-shore oil rigs.